Senior living marketing teams are revamping their strategies for family caregivers with new messages centered around caring for a loved one at home.
Louisville, Kentucky-based Atria Senior Living has always included family caregivers in marketing with strategies built around the profile of the adult daughter. Now, the company is broadening its message for a wider swath of potential customers, including men who care for their loved ones. The company’s customers are now more tech-savvy than they were in the recent past.
“They’re not really interested in being given a beautiful piece of collateral, where they can peruse your pictures and read about your services,” Graziose told Senior Housing News. “They need you to show them the proof to build that empathy, to build that connection and trust.”
Atria is keying in on the family caregiver because they are often decision-makers for their spouses or loved ones. Their opinions can spell the difference between whether someone moves into one senior living community or another.
It’s a group that large national referral partners such as A Place for Mom, also have targeted.
While the senior living industry as a whole does well at making “acute decisions” when there are medical emergencies that necessitate senior living as a viable option, there is room for improvement in reaching prospects “upstream” and shifting the spotlight to the people caring for loved ones, according to A Place for Mom Chief Marketing Officer Chris Milone. The company is creating videos centered on the cost of care and how to prepare for becoming a caregiver for an older adult, Milone said.
“If you look at a lot of our marketing now, it’s focused on caregiver conversations, what people are going through in real life,” Milone said. “Those are our most powerful pieces, our storytelling from actual live caregivers, because I think people feel like those folks are in a similar boat, and it speaks to them.”
Reaching senior living prospects
Senior living marketing leaders are embracing and showcasing authenticity in their messaging to prospects and their families. It’s a focus for industry organizations such as the American Senior Housing Association and its Where You Live Matters platform.
Where You Live Matters has incorporated more authentic video content including testimonials from residents and caregivers speaking about their journey into senior living, according to ASHA President and CEO David Schless.
“We’ve really made a very concerted effort with the site to try and provide honest, trustworthy information, and not necessarily saying senior housing is the right choice for everyone at the right time,” Schless told SHN. “One of the recent pieces added to the site, we worked with ATI Advisory on … looking at the research on home delivered services to try and provide information that is unbiased.”
ASHA and Where You Live Matters last month released a guide on the benefits and trade offs between home care and senior living. The report shows the difference and gaps in care between senior living and home care, along with dispelling common myths about the industry, helping prospects understand when senior living is the right option for them.
Farmington Hills, Michigan-based Beztak reaches out directly to caregivers with its messaging , according to Jason Kohler, executive vice president of senior living. Beztak uses AI chatbots to answer questions, including by dispensing information and advice about better caring for a loved one who is aging.
Visitors ask questions regarding when it’s time to stop driving, when is a good time to move into a senior living and community the language and particulars of senior living services. Because these questions come directly from caregivers, it’s helping shape the company’s marketing strategy to have stronger answers readily available.
“It’s really about answering these questions that people have,” Kohler said. “They’re not just searching for assisted living near me.”
Atria condenses some of its informational materials into a caregiver’s guide with content that helps senior living prospects search for services, such as industry terminology and signs it may be time to move into senior living. The operator’s marketing leaders also expanded the company’s chat functionalities with AI usage to be available 24/7 to be respectful of caregivers’ time.
Atria has also focused on pricing transparency efforts to make information easily available, with unit costs refreshed every two hours on its website.
Senior living versus the home
Living and aging in place at home remains senior living’s biggest competition for residents. Older adults might assume they can’t afford senior living or see themselves living in a community, but operators are using marketing and messaging to dispel those notions when possible.
Operators and referral sources are focusing on breaking down the actual costs of taking care of an older adult. Visitors to the Atria website can utilize a cost calculator that shows hidden costs, like vehicle maintenance or insurance, they might not consider when caring for an aging parent or adult.
“Sticker shock is real,” Gaziose said. “When you start taking into account everything that’s included in senior living communities … We find that it’s generally much more expensive to try to piecemeal all those pieces at home.”
Beztak partners with third-party wealth advisory groups to give advice on how seniors and their families can pay for senior living, given the upfront costs associated with it. The company compares the cost of senior living and living at home to show that the former isn’t always more expensive than the latter.
A Place for Mom has the unique position of straddling both the home care and senior living industries, and when working with prospective caregivers, highlights the benefits of both to present the best option.
“We run through the entire situation, and we will play that back for the caregiver,” Milone said. “The incentives might be different, there’s a lot to think through there … So getting that right advice up front, I think that’s so important for caregivers.”
